Religious Liberty

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Does traditional faith equal hate? Southern Poverty Law Center coverage raises unasked questions

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Here's a proactive journalistic question: Does expressing one's faith and beliefs always and without exception equal hate?

Maybe that's too broad. Let's try a variation on that question: Does expressing ancient and/or traditional forms of religious beliefs always and without exception equal hate?

I ask because of an important news story that's gotten some traction in evangelical and conservative media and may soon cross over into the mainstream press. I'm hoping -- and not against hope, I pray -- that journalists will pause and ask some serious factual questions if and when that coverage takes place.

To be sure, it's tough being a conservative Christian or interfaith public policy group these days. Just ask Christianity Today, reporting on something new that's taking place at the influential charity watchdog website GuideStar.org:

Several Christian organizations known for their advocacy on behalf of traditional marriage and families were recently labeled hate groups on one of America’s top charity research sites, 1
In response to “hateful rhetoric” during a “highly politicized moment” in American history, the portal began incorporating designations from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) this month. Profiles for Christian nonprofits like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Liberty Counsel, the Family Research Council (FRC), and the American Family Association featured a banner saying they had been flagged as a hate group.
The SPLC’s “hate group” label, though often-cited, is controversial, particularly among conservatives. The Alabama-based watchdog charity applies the term to organizations that oppose same-sex marriage and certain LGBT rights as well as to violent and extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, and Nation of Islam.


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Are Southern voters really different? Washington Post political desk avoids religion, again

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We are, of course, talking about the most important news story in the history of the universe. That is, until the next political proxy war takes place between Citizen Donald Trump and powers that be in elite American culture.

So Republican Karen Handel defeated House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- as well as 30-year-old documentary filmmaker Jon Ossoff -- for a traditionally Republican seat in the greater Atlanta area.

If the GOP had lost, the news media powers that be would have hailed it as a tremendous loss for Trump -- even though this was a rather pricey, highly educated district that wasn't fond of Trump (as noted in this New York Times fact piece).

Since the Democrats lost, this affair was hailed -- by Trump supporters -- as a great win for their bronze-tinted leader, as opposed to Handel, a pro-life Catholic.

One thing was clear: Acela-zone journalists knew that this race was about money and jobs, as well as politics, money and jobs. Here's the most recent Washington Post overture:

Narrow losses in two House special elections had Democrats once again trading recriminations Wednesday and pondering anew whether their leaders have them on a path back to power.
Especially painful was Jon Ossoff’s three-percentage-point loss Tuesday in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District after his campaign was buoyed by more than $23 million in donations, much of it from grass-roots Democrats across the country eager to oppose President Trump.
That funding surge was blunted by millions of dollars’ worth of TV ads and mailers from Republican victor Karen Handel and from outside GOP groups. A common theme in those efforts was to tie Ossoff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) -- a figure both well-known and widely reviled, according to Republican polling.

You can hear the same dirge here, in the Times. However, down near the bottom of that long Post report there were some interesting thoughts from Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), assistant House Democratic leader. He was concerned about weak efforts to turn out African American voters, but he also added:

But Clyburn said he asked the DCCC “not to make it a national cause” and that he “intentionally did not want it nationalized . . . because I know how South Carolina voters are.” ...
“Southern voters are a totally different breed,” he added. “And Southern voters react parochially.”

Maybe, just maybe, there were some cultural issues at play in this race? Down South, issues of culture, morality and faith tend to be rather important. Can I hear an "Amen"?


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Oh! Canada! -- Journalists ignore key questions in Alberta Christian school's Bible battle

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Canada, which celebrates its 150th anniversary as a nation this year, is a unique place religion-wise, as my colleague Richard Ostling pointed out recently.

Despite being lampooned by the fictional McKenzie Brothers duo, Canadians are uniformly polite and are among the smartest people around. Any country that can produce literary titans such as Robertson Davies and Alice Munro is no slouch in the scholarship department.

Important trends that have accelerated in recent years are Canada's increased secularization and the acceptance of same-sex marriage. One of the commemorative postage stamps released for the sesquicentennial by Canada Post celebrates the passage of that nation's Civil Marriage Act as a national milestone.

Given those trends, the headlines coming out of the province of Alberta shouldn't be as jarring as they come across -- or should they?

Judge for yourself. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked up a Canadian Press news agency story with this blunt headline: "Alberta Christian school worried school division could ban Bible verses." There are several church-state holes in this story (think religious liberty issues, without the scare quotes), which we will be getting to shortly.

Let's dive in at the beginning. This excerpt is long, but necessary. Please read this closely and try to spot what I believe is a revealing typo:

A Christian school southeast of Edmonton says it fears the school division is moving to censor what parts of the Bible can be taught.
Several Bible verses were to be included in a handbook for students at the Cornerstone Christian Academy in Kingman, Alta.
Trustees from the Battle River School Division say they believe the verses might contravene Alberta's human rights code. 


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Ongoing drama of Southern Baptists and race: Who was there to cover alt-right debate in Phoenix?

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For quite a few hours now, the most popular article at The Atlantic website has been Emma Green's strategic piece with this double-decker headline: 

A Resolution Condemning White Supremacy Causes Chaos at the Southern Baptist Convention
At its annual meeting, the evangelical denomination initially declined to consider a statement of its opposition to the alt-right.

Look for this right there on the website's front page, under the advertisement for "The Handmaid's Tale."

I'm waiting for the update on that timely piece and I have no doubt that it's on the way. It appears to me that her piece was a key domino in this coverage.

It has been a remarkable day, watching journalists tune into the 2017 gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention. Better late than never. In this day of tight travel budgets, and fewer slots for trained religion-beat professionals, it's appears that there are few journalistic boots on the ground there in Phoenix (see Julia Duin post here), in terms of mainstream media.

But you know what? It's hard to tell, with the SBC streaming the main proceedings and with a waterfall of #SBC17 tweets pointing reporters, those with the eyes to see, to all kinds of voices and perspectives.

The pre-convention buzz centered on the fate of the Rev. Russell Moore, leader of the convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Instead, the story of the convention turned out to be a bumbling, but ultimately convicting, SBC effort to deal with race and one of the hottest of hot-button labels in current American life -- "alt-right." The end result was a major win for the convention and, in particular, the SBC's growing number of black church leaders -- who are among Moore's strongest supporters.

Moore stood to deliver a sure-fire soundbite for the night. Look for this in news coverage tomorrow.

Basically, he said the resolution in question has a number on it -- 10. Then he added that the alt-right has a number on it -- 666.


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Shut out by President Trump: The Wall Street Journal details the woes of Russell Moore

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It’s mid-June and time for the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting, this year in sweltering Phoenix.

During the years I worked for the Houston Chronicle, attending this confab was a two-reporter affair, with space on A1 all but guaranteed. The Chronicle’s religion section had the reputation of providing incisive coverage, so we prepped for it for weeks, scoping out all the various factions.

Press coverage of the SBC in recent years is not what it was in the turbulent ‘80s, the years of the conservative takeover (or take back) of the denomination -- an era in which I saw the most delicious displays of religious politics. Unlike other denominations that pretend they’re too good for this sort of thing, the Southern Baptists took great pleasure in wheeling and dealing.

But far fewer reporters today are following the ins and outs of the SBC, which is why it was a nice change to see this Wall Street Journal piece on the Rev. Russell Moore, whose opposition to Donald Trump has cost him dearly.

WASHINGTON -- When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty last month, he was surrounded in the White House Rose Garden by religious figures -- Catholics, orthodox Jews, Sikhs and a host of evangelical Christians.
One prominent evangelical was conspicuously missing: Russell Moore, the public face and chief lobbyist of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination.
Mr. Moore’s absence was a sign of the rift between him and the new administration, and hinted at a rupture within the Southern Baptist Convention itself that is challenging Mr. Moore’s leadership and potentially pushing the powerful, conservative institution off the political course he set.


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New York Times offers solid Religious Left update, with skewed headline that's LOL territory

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Every now and then, newspapers need to go out of their way to correct errors found in headlines, but not in stories.

This would, for example, help news consumers understand that headlines -- 99.9 percent of the time -- are written by copy-desk editors who do not consult with the professionals who actually reported, wrote and edited the story in question.

My first full-time job in journalism was working as a copy editor -- laying out news pages, doing final edits and, yes, writing headlines. It's hard work and you rarely have time to visit the newsroom for debates with reporters about the wording of headlines.

Anyway, one of the big religion-beat stories of the weekend ran at The New York Times with this double-decker headline: 

Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game.
Faith leaders whose politics fall to the left of center are getting more involved in politics to fight against President Trump’s policies

That top line is simply wrong. Anyone who has worked the religion beat in recent decades knows that it is wrong -- wrong as in factually wrong.

Read carefully, and note that the headline does not accurately state the primary thesis by religion-beat veteran Laurie Goodstein in this summary material up top:

Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved -- and even recruiting political candidates -- to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.
Some are calling the holy ruckus a “religious resistance.” Others, mindful that periodic attempts at a resurgence on the religious left have all failed, point to an even loftier ambition than taking on the current White House: After 40 years in which the Christian right has dominated the influence of organized religion on American politics -- souring some people on religion altogether, studies show -- left-leaning faith leaders are hungry to break the right’s grip on setting the nation’s moral agenda.

I would question one piece of that statement. When did religious progressives (defined in terms of doctrine) ever "shun the political arena"?


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Coast-to-coast coverage of anti-sharia protest offers lots of heat, but little or no light

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Arguments about religion and freedom took to the streets around the country this past weekend as a group called ACT for America staged anti-sharia law demonstrations at roughly 28 locations around the country.

I wasn’t aware of the event until I read a piece in the Seattle Times announcing the rally. The lead sentence, which began with, “Supporters of an organization considered a hate group by local Muslims will gather in Seattle on Saturday…” told me all I needed to know about the Times’ take on the event.

Once again, we have one of those news stories where editors already know who is totally good and who is totally evil (there are no variations or debates on either side, you see) and there is no need to let readers hear from other voices. It's much easier just to write an editorial.

Sadly, the Seattle paper didn’t improve things much with its post-rally story: 

Supporters of an organization labeled an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center gathered Saturday in downtown Seattle as part of a national “March Against Sharia,” but were outnumbered by counterprotesters who used horns, whistles and chants to drown out their message.
The counterprotest, called “Seattle Stands With Our Muslim Neighbors,” drew a few hundred people to target the much-publicized demonstration sponsored by ACT for America. That group claims Islamic Sharia law — which is not in effect in the United States -- is a threat to American values. Sharia is religious law found in the Quran, and some Muslim-majority countries use Sharia law in their legal systems.

Did other media do better?

The report from ABC-TV quoted its Seattle affiliate and a Minneapolis newspaper about the status of rallies in both those cities, then quoted an Islamic studies professor in Hamilton, Ontario to comment on what’s going on in the States. Weren’t there any Islamic studies scholars in American universities who could be quoted?

CNN’s report was only a little better: 


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Thinking about America's new sort-of-civil war: Dividing lines are politics, religion and ...

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Yes, it's the "Jesusland" map again.

With good cause. Trust me on that.

I can't think of a better illustration, when it comes to the following must-read think piece by David French, one of our nation's most important #NeverTrump cultural conservatives.

But first, if you never read his National Review piece describing the alt-right's war on his family, because of his opposition to the candidacy of Donald Trump, then read it now. Here is the unforgettable first sentence: "I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber."

Now he is back, with a think piece about the bitter, growing, divisions at the heart of America's alleged public life. This piece -- "We’re Not in a Civil War, but We Are Drifting Toward Divorce" -- contains so many must-booknote URLs and Big Ideas linked to religion news that I hardly know where to start or stop. You know how it is when a book hits you so hard that you basically highlight 90 percent of its contents, turning it into a sea of yellow patches?

The big idea: 

Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?
I’d argue that we face “something else,” and that something else is more akin to the beginning stages of a national divorce than it is to a civil war.


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Dear political reporters: Does Sanders 'Feel the Bern' over Article 6 and religious tests?

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The relationship of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with religion is a bit vague: Born Jewish, Religion News Service in 2015 called him "unabashedly irreligious" and said he only "culturally" identifies as Jewish these days.

As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders once defended the placement of a menorah in a public square.

I devoutly hope Sanders' relationship with the Constitution of the United States is less tenuous, particularly as it relates to the last 20 words of Article 6. This is certainly an issue in the news, right now.

...no religious Test [sic] shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Forgive the long preamble, but it's needed to set up today's other hot Donald Trump administration-related story, the question of whether or not Russell Vought will be allowed a vote by the full U.S. Senate on his nomination as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Sanders may object to Vought on other points -- deadlines didn't allow a review of the full Budget Committee hearing video -- but about 44 minutes into the recording, we find a remarkable attack on the nominee centering on an article Vought wrote about 16 months ago defending Wheaton College, his alma mater, during the controversy over then-professor Lacryia Hawkins and her views on Islam.

Writing at The Resurgent, a conservative blog, Vought declared:

Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.


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